


Outlet

by Golden_Dreams



Category: Disney Duck Universe, DuckTales (Cartoon 1987), DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Anger, Family, Fatherly Scrooge, Feels, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-20 11:46:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18125654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golden_Dreams/pseuds/Golden_Dreams
Summary: Scrooge helps Donald try to find an outlet for his anger.





	1. The Inciting Incident

Scrooge put his hand on Donald’s shoulder. He could feel everything through this simple touch. He felt his nephew’s muscles, held tense and occasionally twitching, as Donald was the furthest from relaxed he could possibly be. He felt Donald breathing, hard and heavy, as his lungs violently processed the air he couldn’t seem to get through his body fast enough. He felt the body heat of someone who had recently been worked up into a fury. As Donald turned to face his uncle, as was routine when Donald became completely enraged, his eyes started to well up with tears. Seeing his nephew in such a state was enough to make Scrooge’s heart twist in pain; he knew Donald never meant to cause such destruction, something simply set him off and, like the detonator of a bomb, couldn’t be un-set. Once the anger started to boil within him, there wasn’t much to do except wait it out, and Scrooge always tried to be there for the aftermath, when Donald had realized what his anger had allowed him to do. Donald let out a sob as Scrooge pulled him into a hug, rubbing circles therapeutically into his back as he released his frustration and guilt into his uncle’s shoulder.

“Let me help you.” Scrooge pleaded, as Donald continued to cry. He couldn’t blame the lad for being so upset. In the sixteen years his nephew had been alive, Scrooge had never seen destruction on par with what he was currently witnessing. Donald and Della’s room in the tower of McDuck Manor was in ruins. Numerous holes had been punched through the wall on Donald’s side, likely the cause of his bruised and bleeding hands as some of the holes had a view of the hallway, where others weren’t as clear due to a wall stud blocking the path of Donald’s fist. There were several dents, scratches, and gouges in the hardwood floor from where Donald had violently thrown around his guitar and amplifier, each of which lay in pieces strewn about the room. The frames of both beds were nearly shattered, and the window between the beds had a fist-sized hole in the glass.

_ “At this rate the best help he can get is an ambulance ride” _ Scrooge fretted to himself as he broke the embrace with his nephew to examine his wounds. Scrooge audibly gasped as he saw Donald’s hands, which were covered in a series of lacerations and bruises, as well as a finger or two persisting at odd angles. To make matters worse, Donald’s right hand was peppered with shards of glass sticking out of the knuckles, glistening threateningly as the sunlight shone through the pieces, outlining dark spots of blood on them. While both Scrooge and Duckworth had some form of medical training, Scrooge’s albeit more informal and improvisational from his days in the Klondike, they weren’t enough to help Donald in this situation, who continued to lose blood from his injuries.

Donald tried his hardest not to look down. While he felt a perplexing combination of sensations at that moment, the strongest were certainly pain and guilt. Each hand seemed to be in agony for completely different reasons. His left hand was completely bruised, with his ring finger having been broken, and because of being less used to punching with it, his form slipped in his rage. The odd angles he began punching solid surfaces at without even noticing had quickly bent said finger in a sickening fashion, as if it were trying to literally run against the grain of the rest of its finger brethren. The knuckles and skin on the top of the hand had also been injured from the sheer force of punching through the wall; oddly enough, his left hand hit far more wall studs than his right did. His right hand wasn’t faring much better, and although its punching technique never faltered, even in an extremely angered state, Donald had used it far more than his left while punching the wall, as well as used it to punch through a window. The wounds had been open for a while by this point. Donald could tell. The damage done towards the end of his rage was all slightly spattered with blood, as if a small paintbrush had flicked it on as an avant-garde art exhibit on his destructive tendencies, or…

_ “The destructive tendencies of lousy nephews.”  _ Donald sighed to himself as he kept his head angled upwards, nauseated by the near-constant reek of iron in the air, knowing that if he sees the blood now that he’s in a right state of mind, he’s passing out. But he’d keep his head like this for as long as it took. He wasn’t going to burden his uncle with anything more, like having to carry him out to the car for a ride to the hospital. He already felt several thousand pounds of guilt for what he had already done in his anger this one time, let alone every other time he’s done it. Over the course of his life, he’s no doubt cost his uncle tens of thousands of dollars in houseware replacements and structural repairs, and although anything under one million was essentially pocket change for Scrooge, it still hurt Donald to know it was his fault Scrooge had these additional expenses. No one likes spending money when they don’t have to, even if you always will have the money to spend, Donald supposed. He just hoped that the next time wouldn’t be so bad. He thought about how Della would react when she saw that he’d destroyed the room again.

_ “What the hell, Don?”  _ he imagined she’d yell.  _ “Why do you keep wrecking the house? Uncle Scrooge has to pay for it all, you know!” _ It hurt to think about, but Donald couldn’t stop himself. It was an inevitable encounter. He promised himself the last time he’d never do it again, but here he was. When the tears came, Donald just couldn’t stop them.

“Aw laddie…it’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it.” Scrooge softly reassured as he wiped the tears off his nephew’s cheek, careful not to stain his face with blood.

“I-I’m sorry, Uncle Scrooge…I just got so mad, and-” Donald stuttered as he made the fatal error of looking at his own hands. The sight of the steady stream of blood pouring out of his hands made his heart skip at least two beats. He could feel the flow of it on his skin, the heat of it. The smell had only intensified since he’d looked at his injuries, and he started to panic. He could feel his heartbeat in his hands, in his arms, in his chest. It was so  _ loud _ . His body felt light, while his head seemed to be weighing him down, and his eyes began to lose focus, the vision constricting like his eyeballs themselves were being suffocated. He felt his uncle’s arms come up underneath his own to support him, and soon all faded to black.


	2. A Solution

Donald awoke to the distant sound of an engine humming. Opening his eyes, he could process the scene better; he was lying on the backseat of one of Scrooge’s limousines, comforting Donald, as he always loved the feel and smell of leather, with his uncle sitting next to him and gently stroking the feathers on his head as Duckworth drove. Scrooge was looking out the window with a look of concern painted on his face, understandably; Donald’s rage had gotten him injured enough to warrant a visit to the emergency room, and he can’t seem to control it or prevent it before it happens. What if next time, he gets even more injured, or hurts someone else? As if sensing his nephew’s silent fears, Scrooge looked down at Donald, his face lighting up as he realized he was awake.

“How are you feeling, lad?” Scrooge asked as he continued to ruffle Donald’s head feathers.

“Wonderful, uncle!” Donald sarcastically quipped while rolling his eyes, causing Scrooge to burst out laughing. Although Scrooge commonly dealt with awkward or upsetting situations with laughter, this time it was genuine. He loved when his nephew made him chuckle.

“Well, good enough to be cracking jokes, it seems.” Scrooge smirked as he helped Donald sit up in the seat. “The hospital’s only a few minutes away” he reassured. Donald’s mind refocused; for the moment, healing the physical damage, but after that, he was determined to find a way to stop this from happening, whatever it took. He couldn’t live with himself if it happened again. This was the first time he needed emergency medical treatment thanks to an anger outburst, and Donald vowed to make it the last.

The following week, a series of bandages and one finger splint later, Donald found himself in his uncle’s office. Usually, when Scrooge wanted to talk to his niece or nephew (or both) about something, he’d call them to his office to give the conversation a degree of privacy, even if the subject wasn’t particularly controversial or secretive. It was also a way for the kids to know that they had Scrooge’s undivided attention, as he set physically aside the work he was doing to talk to either of them. This time, however, Donald called Scrooge to his own office; there was something he needed to figure out.

“How can I stop it? I don’t want to be like this…” Donald asked, looking his uncle in the eyes and doing nothing to hide the frustration and sadness in his voice. To this question, Scrooge let out a heavy sigh. He felt a similar frustration for sure, but for different reasons. Of course, he wasn’t particularly fond of having to keep spending money whenever his nephew would destroy a bedframe, or a china set, but more than anything, he couldn’t stand to see Donald upset over this; it broke his heart. As the kids had become teenagers, he started taking them on more dangerous and thrilling adventures, and while Della was more daring than Donald, on par with Scrooge himself, Donald’s caution acted as one of two extremes, the other being his rage, a state in which he was nearly unstoppable. When protecting his family or himself, Donald’s absurd strength and deadly speed had proven to be a great asset many times, and he was always happy when his anger enabled him to help others. However, any frustration or annoyance gone on too long could cause Donald to erupt. Scrooge saw the potential in his nephew; the ferocity, the power, it all pointed to a force to be reckoned with, if Donald could control it himself, that is. Scrooge was prepared to help cultivate this; after all, he’s certainly familiar with the value of long-term investments.

“Lad, if I’ve learned anything in my years, it’s that every problem has a solution, no matter how obtuse.” Scrooge began, already with a solution in mind to suggest. “I think you and I together can solve this anger problem of yours. I have an idea.” Scrooge said with a warm smile.

“What are you thinking, uncle?” Donald said, now curious. His uncle was smart, and he surely had been thinking of a way to combat his uncontrollable rage for a while now. Why had he never proposed an idea before?

“I want to teach you how to fight! Maybe if you take all your aggression out with your ol’ Uncle Scrooge, you won’t want to do it to my house instead!” Scrooge chuckled as he threw mock punches at the air for dramatic effect. The moment he saw Donald’s gaze averted and his face drop a little, he regretted trying to be funny.

“I didn’t mean it like that Donald, the damages don’t bother me.” Scrooge reassured as he got up from his chair and crouched in front of his nephew. “I want to help you. It breaks my heart to see you like this, it has nothing to do with the money.” Scrooge emphasized as he put his hand on Donald’s shoulder.

“Thanks Uncle.” Donald replied with a slight smile.

“Wait, why are you going to teach me? Shouldn’t I just go to a karate school or something?” Donald inquired. It made sense to him, he thought. The only time he’d ever attended any sort of martial arts school was when he and Della were small children, and Scrooge had brought them to a Karate dojo to see what they thought of it. Whereas the ever-adventurous Della had great fun jumping around everywhere, kicking pads and breaking boards, Donald never got into it, mostly because the instructor emphatically yelled with every technique he did, and after only a few techniques, Donald was already terrified and crying, seeking out Scrooge to save him.

“Och, why would I pay money for some cut-rate hack downtown who got his black belt from a cereal box? There aren’t any reputable martial artists in Duckburg, and for my nephew, only the best will suffice!” Scrooge said as he lightly squeezed Donald’s shoulder.

“The best, in this case, being me! Besides, I’ve been fighting people over treasure, literally and figuratively, for decades! I’ll make some phone calls and get a little gym made, just for the two of us!” Scrooge said excitedly as he ran over to his phonebook, ready to call wholesale seller connections he had to get some cheap wall mirrors and punching bags. Della was still going to the same Karate dojo she’d been devoted to for at least a decade, so she most likely wouldn’t use the gym much. Scrooge, despite being skeptical the owner of the dojo could defend himself against an untrained teenager, still paid for Della’s lessons since she loved it so much, and he simply didn’t have the heart to deny it to her. Besides, she had proven herself on adventures many times. Despite being a teenager, she was plenty capable of incapacitating enemies her own size, and effectively defending herself against those larger than her. While Donald had more power than Della, he had no training, and in the few instances he was in combat situations, the speed and weight of his punches usually got him through them alive, but not unscathed. Scrooge figured his sheer experience, combined with a modest amount of formal close-quarters combat training acquired during his brief stint at S.H.U.S.H. should prove much better for his nephew.

“Jeez, someone’s humble. I’ll give it a shot, I guess.” Donald laughed as he walked out of the room. He wanted to sound snarky and aloof, but in reality, it made him happy to know his uncle had such an investment in him, and was willing to go to these sorts of lengths. Scrooge McDuck, a man who prided himself on his accomplishments, on  _ doing _ things, was going to set time aside to help his incompetent nephew sort out his anger issues? Donald wasn’t sure of the reasoning. Didn’t he have better things to do? Without being able to find a logical explanation, Donald was satisfied he had to chalk it up to the force of his uncle’s love for him.

_ “I guess I can live with that.”  _ Donald thought to himself as he continued to go about his day, while his uncle was busy ordering a couple thousand dollars’ worth of exercise and combat sports equipment. Like everything else he did, Scrooge was taking this seriously.

 


End file.
